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In Making Campuses Safe for Women, a Travesty of Justice for Men
Submitted by Matt on Mon, 2011-06-06 23:58
Article here. Excerpt:
'American courts take exacting precautions to avoid convicting an innocent person of a crime. It was therefore startling to read the April 4, 2011, directive on sexual violence sent by the U.S. Department of Education's assistant secretary for civil rights, Russlynn H. Ali, to college officials across the country. In an effort to make campuses safe and equitable for women, Ali, with the full support of her department, advocates procedures that are unjust to men.
...
"We will use all of the tools at our disposal including ... withholding federal funds ... to ensure that women are free from sexual violence," Ali told NPR last year. One such tool is the standard of proof that college disciplinary committees use when determining guilt. Many colleges employ a "beyond a reasonable doubt" or a "clear and convincing" standard. (Roughly speaking, "beyond a reasonable doubt" requires a 98-percent certainty of guilt; clear and convincing, an 80-percent certainty.) Ali, however, orders all colleges to adopt the far-less-demanding standard of "preponderance of the evidence." Using that standard, a defendant can be found guilty if members of a disciplinary committee believe there is slightly more than a 50/50 chance that he committed the crime. That standard will make it far easier for disciplinary committees to try, convict, and punish an accused student (almost always a male).'
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Comments
Preponderance of Evidence
Your supposition is that she is taking them to court, she is not. She is making an administrative decision on disciplinary issues. In almost all administrative cases, these decisions are made by preponderance of the evidence "50.000001 percent of the evidence". She has not thrown out the constitution or beyond a reasonable doubt or clear and convincing evidence, she is talking about setting guidelines for the administrative decision.
It is a disciplinary action, not a criminal court. There are routes of appeal also and these are available. They also have the ability to appeal to a civil court for jurisdiction, not a criminal court since it is not a criminal tribunal.
They won't be going to jail because of this action, they will be put on probation or if it warrants, thrown out of school.
A criminal court can use the evidence but not the decision of the administrative proceeding as evidence of wrong doing.
Most rape cases are thrown out of criminal court because of the beyond a reasonable doubt proof required. For women then the next best thing is to sue in a civil court (clear and convincing evidence) are used when the criminal case is not prosecuted or thrown out of court.
No our justice system is perfect but it's pretty damn good.
Preponderance of Evidence
If a college supports a woman's claim because of the '50.000001 percent of the evidence', the woman can than use that decision to pursue criminal charges for which the college process can constitute supporting evidence.
These are not parking tickets
Oh. Men only can be thrown out of school. I guess that makes this (required) policy acceptable. I wonder if women can be thrown out of school if a preponderance of evidence suggests that an accusation is false.
These aren't traffic tickets. They are potentially life changing events. There is no grounding in preponderance of evidence, since it is open to significant interpretation and uncertainty.
The accused in the Duke University fiasco were indicted by a grand jury. Oops. That alone says how lax legal let alone administrative actions can be. These three men would be in jail today if they did not come from families with the financial means to defend them. They were convicted on day one by the university. In fact, they were convicted without a preponderance of evidence.
Our justice system is far from perfect. It is abysmal. Letting political correctness run even more rampant in our colleges and universities is another loss in the war on men.
One question, Bob
What if it were your son... or you... who was facing this sort of "charge" during your college days? Would you then be fine with a bunch of your fellow students deciding they are 51% sure you are "guilty" of something and then decide that you should be punished? Or would you want an actual legal authority handling the matter that was held to a guilty-beyond-reasonable-doubt standard?
Something to think about: Remember that before our Constitution set this standard, anyone and everyone who was so much as suspected of all manner of things was just thrown into jail, fined, etc. and there was little or no redress. That is what things like "Campus Judicial Councils" are today: little more than star chambers where students are subjected to "administrative procedures" wherein the outcome is a foregone conclusion. Would you want to live with that in your life?